Last-minute deal extends county caregivers' health insurance

GIG CONAUGHTON - Staff Writer

SAN DIEGO - Thousands of "in-home support" caregivers whothought they were about to lose their health care coverage weregiven a reprieve this week when the county of San Diego reached alast-minute agreement on a health care plan with Kaiser
Permanente.

The county-supplemented health insurance for roughly 3,000
"in-home support" workers - care givers who help make sure that
seriously ill, disabled, frail and elderly persons can stay in
their homes rather than be sent to institutions - was scheduled to
run out Tuesday.

However, Doug Moore of the United Domestic Workers of America
said Wednesday that the county, with the union's help, was able to
reach a new health care agreement for the workers at the eleventh
hour with Kaiser.

"They're ecstatic," Moore said of the in-home support workers.
"They're in tears."

Moore and Susan Brazeaux, a labor relations manager with the
county, said the new Kaiser contract would mean the in-home support
workers would actually be spending slightly less for their health
insurance.

Last week, those in-home support workers were anything but
ecstatic.

Dozens of the caregivers appeared before county supervisors to
complain bitterly that the county was threatening to cut their
health insurance. The state provides the funding for in-home
support services around the state. San Diego County, through a
public authority it created in 2001, manages the services
locally.

Carlos Arauz, the county's director of human resources, said
last week that the workers' health care worries were created by
forces outside the county's control - increasing health care
costs.

He said the workers were in the second year of a three-year
contract they had negotiated with the county that runs through Jan.
12, 2008. But he said the county had a separate contract with Sharp
Healthcare - the one that expired Tuesday - that provided the
workers' health insurance, with the help of a $215 a month per
worker stipend the county gave workers to offset the insurance
plan's costs.

When the county sought bids for a new contract several months
ago, only Sharp was interested. But Sharp's bid was much more
expensive.

That meant that either the workers, or the county, would have to
spend much more money a month to bridge the gap between the
county's $215 a month allowance and the premiums of the proposed
Sharp plan.

County supervisors voluntarily voted to increase the county
stipend by 10 percent - from $215 a month to $236.50 - even though
the workers had a binding contract and the county was not legally
obligated to offer to increase the stipend.

However, supervisors said they couldn't come up with any more
money for the in-home support program unless they "robbed" other
programs to do so.

Meanwhile, the workers, who earn about $9 an hour, said if the
county didn't come up with more money they would be left without
health care. Many of them told supervisors that could be disastrous
for them because many were family members of the disabled and ill
people they took care of, and had their own health care
troubles.

One in-home caretaker, Al Arrington, pleaded with supervisors
last week to intervene.

"We only make $9 an hour, we cannot afford a 100 percent, 200
percent, 300 percent increase in our insurance premiums," he said.
"Please, we beg you to consider maintaining our health insurance as
it is, at the cost it is."

Moore said Wednesday that union took it upon itself to seek out
an alternative health care plan, and eventually discovered that
Kaiser was interested.

Brazeaux said in-home support workers turned out to thank
supervisors at their meeting Tuesday. She said the Kaiser contract
was a one-year agreement with options that could allow it to be
renewed.

Moore, meanwhile, said that under the Kaiser contract, the
in-home support workers would have to pay about $32 a month out of
their own pockets - in part because of the 10 percent increase on
the health care stipend - rather than the $52 a month they were
spending under the previous plan.